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In a world where it seems like
everyone’s just going in circles, it’s nice to know some people are doing it
for a reason.

In 1985, one man decided he’d circle
a track for 24 hours. I know, crazy – right? He must be a mental case, or the
worst kind of out of touch person: a politician. But no, it turns out he did it
in an attempt to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

I probed further and discovered colorectal
surgeon Dr. Gordy Klatt … okay, poor choice of words with the probe thing. I
once asked my urologist what his favorite prostate inspection joke was, but he
couldn’t put his finger on it.

In his business Klatt saw plenty of
cancer, so he wanted to support his patients and help the local ACS office.
Turns out Klatt was also a marathon runner, so in May, 1985, he ran for more
than 83 miles over the course of a full day. Friends donated $25 each to go
along with him for 30 minutes of his marathon.

Was it successful? He raised $27,000
for the fight against cancer.

(By the way, this isn’t an effort to
raise money “for cancer”. You don’t want cancer to have money. Besides, cancer
has no hands. No, you raise money to fight cancer, and if cancer doesn’t like
that – too bad.)

Klatt had a lot of time to think
during those 24 hours. This was pre-iPod, after all. It’s true, there really
was a time before iPods. He came up with the idea of a relay event, and a year
later 19 teams took place in the very first Relay for Life.

Now teams participate in 21
countries. Four million Americans in 5,000 communities took part last year – less than those who cook out on Memorial Day
weekend, but slightly more than the number who’ve sent death threats to Justin
Bieber. Maybe The Beeb would be less hated if people knew about the nine
charities he supports, but that’s another story.

There’s even a virtual fundraising
event, Relay For Life of Second Life, which has raised over a million dollars.
I don’t even have time to deal with first life.

This makes The ACS Relay For Life the
world’s largest grassroots fundraising movement, unless you count the people
who call in to vote on American Idol. In addition to being a good cause, it
gives participants a chance to live their childhood dream of staying up all
night since, after all, cancer never sleeps. (It has no hands, and thus can’t
pull on its pajamas.)

Participants can stay up all night,
sleep in the tents while other team members are on the track, or even go home
to nap – it’s not the technicalities that matter so much as the fund raising.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of fun stuff going on at the Relays, and if
you sleep you miss it.

It might seem strange to have fun while
fighting something so evil, but one Relay theme is “Celebrate. Remember. Fight
back.” As a humor columnist and a well-known walking disaster whose own theme
is “What could possibly go wrong?” I know better than anyone that such things
are better faced with love and laughter. Besides, it’s working: Thanks to new
research and treatment, cancer survivors celebrate more birthdays every year.

How did I get involved in the Relay?
Good question; thanks for asking, Mom. About four years ago I was approached by
a coworker who asked, “You write part time, don’t you?”

“No,” I said. That’s my default
self-preservation response to the question, but he knew about my column,
fiction writing, and vicious letters to the editor, and asked me to do public
information work for the Noble County Relay For Life.

“But I don’t wanna,” I didn’t say that
out loud, because it’s everyone’s responsibility to give something back to the
community. And to use their turn signals

After all, half of all men and one third
of women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes, and all of us will
be affected in one way or another. So I signed up, because I have a certain
small amount of talent in writing and because, like voting or trimming your
nose hairs, it’s the right thing to do.

A couple of years after that I got my
own biopsy, and began an ongoing process of having my prostate watched by my
urologist, who I’ve nicknamed Doctor Digit. It was just this year when my
stepfather had his operation for bladder cancer.

So here I am again, pushing the Noble
County Relay For Life that’s coming up May 19th this year, at the
West Noble High School south of Ligonier. We’re all connected, you see.

Better to be connected in fighting
cancer, rather than having it drag us all down. Not that it could, ‘cause we’re
stronger than that … and it doesn’t have any hands.

You can also
contact Noble County Chairperson Carla Fiandt at the Community State Bank in
Albion, by e-mail at carlaf@csbemail.com, or by phone at 260-636-3744. Or, e-mail Team
Recruitment Chair Stacey Lang at esclang@hotmail.com, or American Cancer Society representative Melissa
Stephens at melissa.stephens@cancer.org, or
260-471-3911.

The Noble County Relay For Life has
set a goal to raise $49,000 this year toward the fight against cancer, and they
want to organize 40 teams to do it with.

So far 22 teams have registered for
the American Cancer Society event, which begins at 10 a.m. May 19 at the West
Noble High School, south of Ligonier. Anyone
wishing to form or join a team, or help out in any other way, can register
online at www.relayforlife.org/noblecountyin.

The theme for this year’s Relay is
“Birthdays”, and organizers are hoping teams will decorate their campsites
accordingly. Team members can go “Over the hill”, “Sweet 16”, or anything else
birthday related – except birthday suits!

Teams are encouraged to search out a
variety of fund raising activities: Everything from bake sales to dinners,
lemonade or food stands, putting out coin cans that are available from the ACS,
or selling luminary bags or Relay “feet”. Teams can secure sponsorships that
count toward their fundraising efforts, do fund raisers on site during the
Relay, or sell track signs that are available for a donation of $100 per sign.
Corporate sponsors are always welcome.

The 2012 Relay For Life will again
feature Quarters For a Cure – an attempt to line the inside of the West Noble School
track with quarters – so everyone should bring their quarters in. If the entire
track is lined, the total would be estimated at around $4,000. The Relay will
also feature a silent auction, in addition to numerous activities.

A current fund raising challenge is
for members to raise $250 through online donations by the end of March, and
amount that will win them a prize.

The next team meeting is April 19, 7
p.m., in the lower level of the Noble County Public Library main branch in
Albion. New team registration forms need to be turned in by the last team
captain meeting, on May 10.

Announcements, ideas, news, and
registration information can all be found on the website at www.relayforlife.org/noblecountyin. For further
information contact Noble County Chairperson Carla Fiandt at Community State
Bank in Albion, by e-mail at carlaf@csbemail.com, or by phone at
260-636-3744, or e-mail Team Recruitment Chair Stacey Lang at esclang@hotmail.com.

A lot of great or famous people come
from Indiana. (You can be famous without being great, of course – especially these
days.) I recently read of the death of a man who isn’t well known, but probably
should be – a man who hailed from Professor Harold Hill’s favorite place, Gary,
Indiana.

Gary is, of course, the former
stomping grounds of the Jackson family, who have some small amount of talent in
the singing and dancing field. People like that tend to migrate from The Middle
to the Coasts, where the entertainment jobs are, so Michael and his kin are often
thought of as Californians.

Much as I love Indiana, I can see a
certain advantage of being in California … especially around, say, January.

The man I’m speaking of is Ralph McQuarrie,
and if you haven’t heard of him you’ve definitely heard of the jobs he was
involved with. McQuarrie, who sure enough moved to California, died this month
at the age of 82.

Some celebrities came to Indiana,
some stayed, and some moved on. (That’s why we can claim Abe Lincoln, who
didn’t stick around.) John Chapman came from Massachusetts, but headed out
looking for a state he could more easily spell. Looking to keep him busy and
out of trouble, John’s father (a former Minuteman at Concord) apprenticed him
as an orchardist, which is a real word. As a result, John’s purported burial
place in Fort Wayne is now called Johnny Appleseed Park.

There was also Ambrose Burnside, a
Civil War general whose odd facial hair gave us the term sideburns; Benjamin Harrison,
who lived in the White House for a short time before he traded it in for dying;
actors Brendan Fraser, Carole Lombard, Shelley Long, Steve McQueen, and James
Dean, among others; that David Letterman fellow; and of course Tony Stewart,
famous for driving in circles … much like anyone trying to drive around
Indianapolis.

Speaking of trying to find your way
around Indianapolis, aviator Amelia Earhart is from Indiana and so, perhaps
ironically, is Wilbur Wright. Also Jim Davis, although talking about his
creation (Garfield) makes me sneeze.

Then there were more notorious
Hoosiers: bank robber John Dillinger; D.C. Stephenson, Grand Hoopla of the Klu
Klux Klan and all-around nasty guy; and of course Jimmy Hoffa, who for all we
know might still be here.

Ralph McQuarrie wasn’t as famous as
those people, but he also didn’t end up in prison or cement overshoes.

There were even some fairly well
known people who lived right here in my area. For instance, Earl Butz (stop it,
that was his name) came from the Albion area to become Secretary of
Agriculture, and Kendallville’s Brad Miller is apparently a pretty good
basketball player.

I don’t follow basketball, but as a
writer I appreciate knowing I share a county with the home of author Gene
Stratton-Porter, whose books were turned into movies just as mine are going to
be. (It’s important to have confidence, people!) Also from here was Arthur F.
Mapes, Indiana State Poet Laureate, who wrote the official state poem. It
starts with: “There once was a lady from Muncie …”

Then there’s Ford Frick, a fellow
writer from Wawaka (where you’ll find a company of the same name). He must have
pursued his dreams, because he became Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

As far as professions are concerned,
maybe my favorite Hoosier celebrity is Jamie Hyneman, who became famous as one
of the Mythbusters. Blowing up stuff
for a living? That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Oh yeah – you’re probably still
wondering about Ralph McQuarrie.

Well, a long time ago a young movie
maker asked him to do some design work for a proposed motion picture. McQuarrie
didn’t think anything would come of it – after reading the script, he decided
it would be too expensive to make – but he did paintings of a gold-plated robot
in a desert, and a villain in a Samurai-inspired helmet. Then, because the
movie opening took place in space, he put a breathing apparatus on the
black-clad bad guy.

The movie had already been rejected by
United Artists and Universal but, when they saw McQuarrie’s drawings, 20th
Century Fox execs green lighted it.

They called the movie Star Wars, and it probably never would
have been made without McQuarrie’s art of clashing lightsabers and battling
spaceships.

Oh, and here’s something fun:
McQuarrie even made an appearance in the series, playing a Rebel general in the
second movie. Still, I would guess the artist, who started out doing animation
for CB S News coverage of the Apollo space program, preferred to stick to his
first love. In addition to providing illustrations and concepts for the first
three Star Wars movies, he worked on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders
of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek IV, and Jurassic Park,
among others.

It’s that kind of behind the scenes
work that brings us the spectacular entertainment we’ve come to expect, so we
should all be glad people like McQuarrie brought their considerable talent to
Hollywood. It’s nice to know Indiana does its share, too … makes you wonder
where the next big Hoosier find will come from, doesn’t it?